How Would Reagan Have Handled Candy Crowley?

by John R Guardiano on October 17, 2012

Lessons from the Gipper. New Hampshire, 1980.

There’s been a lot of whining on the Right about how CNN’s Candy Crowley was unfair to Romney. She was. This is true. Crowley was unfair to Romney because she took sides in the debate. She said Romney was wrong and Obama was right re: Libya.

The two candidates were disputing whether Obama had described the massacre in Benghazi as a terrorist attack. Romney said he hadn’t; Obama said he had.

It so happens that Romney had the better of the argument: Obama described the massacre in Benghazi as a “type of senseless violence,” but not a “terrorist attack.”

“He only used the phrase [acts of terror] after talking about the original 2001 9/11 attacks,” explains the Daily Caller’s Mickey Kaus.

Still, it does no good to whine about Crowley’s decision to play judge and jury in this debate. That hardly was the reason Romney lost. He lost because he failed to capitalize on his opportunities to take the fight to Obama.

Why, just imagine if instead of becoming subdued, Romney had seized upon Crowley’s mistake and made an impassioned case against Obama’s dereliction of duty re: Libya.

That, after all, is what another successful GOP presidential candidate once did: He turned a debate moderator’s misdeed into an opportunity to score politically. Would that Romney had done the same.